Stepping Up
I used to think ten burpees were pretty hard to do – and ten
perfect burpees almost impossible. Down to your hands, kick out
your feet, kick in your feet, jump up, then down to your hands
again. AGAIN! She yells. I want to cry like a baby – and I do -
but only on the inside. Burpees are perhaps the worst kind of
torture ever invented. I want to swear at her, but I don’t because
she might make it worse. I gasp in another chest full of air and I
keep going – ignoring my aching back and hands. Every freeking
joint in my body screams – but she screams louder – AGAIN!
Burpees – fricking burpees – Let’s just call a spade a spade –
they’re barphees. She made me do fifty five of them in combination
with ten jumping jacks tonight – barphees for sure.
Michelle’s Bootcamp runs its course in the Blair Oko Golf Academy.
There are twenty six stairs up to the second floor of the Kinsmen
Sports Centre. Some of us call it the Stairway to Hell. Trust me,
there are exactly twenty six stairs up to the Blair Oko Golf
Academy. On a good day, she makes us climb them only fifty five
times. Fifty five is her magic number. Ten to the n minus one. 10,
9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Add them up and you get fifty five.
Fifty five times twenty six equals one thousand four hundred and
thirty stairs. I know every flaw and scuff on those stairs.
Smarties stains have been at the bottom of the stairs for three
weeks now – a kind reminder of the chocolate I couldn’t eat over
Halloween. Twenty six stairs –imagine Reagan’s distraught mother’s
trip up the stairs to her possessed daughter’s bedroom – consider
the terror and dread in her mother’s heart as she reached the top
– if you can imagine this, you just might come close to
understanding what these stairs have come to mean. I walk up these
stairs two or three times a week, not knowing what’s in store for
me next. How many barphees this week? I pray there won’t be
barphees – but like most prayers, nobody seems to listen. How many
tuck jumps? Can my fifty year old shins handle another tuck jump?
My poor fricking shins. Nobody else complains about their
shins.
She brought us a rope the other day. She must have been
reincarnated from one of those Monks from the Spanish Inquisition.
She is extremely creative. Like a ship’s figurehead she stands on
the weights that hold the rope down, arms on her hips, blond hair
tied in a pony tail, a fierce look in her eyes daring you to quit.
And I am on the other end of the rope, twenty feet away, pulling
it up and down with both hands, trying to make it wave, while
standing in a squat position. And I never quit, but she yells at
me to keep going anyway. One, two, three – oh God, isn’t it sixty
seconds yet – four, five six. My legs and shoulders have never
felt this king of pain. KEEP GOING MURRAY! She screams. Fifteen
seconds – she promises. I count down. But, fifteen seconds is
never REALLY fifteen seconds for Michelle. After twenty five
seconds she finally, thankfully yells, SWITCH! She doesn’t seem to
care that my arms feel like they’ve been stretched to twice their
length.
She even has a torture chamber – it’s in her basement. She has all
sorts of clever gadgets here. A couple of straps hang from a beam
in the ceiling – they’re designed to pull your arms out of their
sockets. I look forward to squats now. Even lunges aren’t so bad.
I tried to negotiate with her the other day – one hundred mountain
climbers in exchange for fourteen barphees. Nope – she said. My
heart sank. Ten sets of fourteen barphees, fourteen kettle ball
swings, fourteen dips and four stairs – I should have reported her
to the police.
The large elastic bands she makes us use could be the worst
invention of all. Try running while a healthy two hundred pound
male holds you back with one of these bands, using every ounce of
strength he has, like it’s some sort of competition. I felt like
punching him.
Sometimes the whole world stands still, my mouth dries up, and it
doesn’t matter how much I breathe because I know there will never
be enough air. I know now what a second wind really is – it’s when
you realize you’re going to die, so you quit breathing hard cause
there’s no point.
But, when I make it to the end of the hour, one minute at time,
sometimes one breath at a time, I get a strange, unfamiliar
feeling. Even though I always finish last, sometimes even ten
minutes behind, I feel like I’ve done something extraordinary –
like I’ve really, really accomplished something. It’s the first
time in my entire life that I have felt proud of my body. It
actually works. And despite the announcements by some previously
unknown body parts, sometimes I go home and I feel really, really
happy. And then when I sleep longer than half an hour at a time
(and every now and then right through the night), and when I
realize that I can’t remember the last time I had reflux, and I
discover that all the clothes I’ve ever worn don’t fit anymore
(even the ones I saved for when or if I ever got skinny again), I
think to myself, “Bring it on Michelle, BRING IT ON!”